Donald Trump suffered “child abuse” at the hands of his “high-functioning sociopath” father, according to an upcoming memoir by the president’s niece.
Mary Trump claims that “love meant nothing” to Fred Sr, “who expected obedience, that is all”, the Daily Mail reports.
After Trump’s mother became seriously ill when he was two years old, the future president was left with “total dependence on a caregiver [Fred Sr] who also caused him terror”, she writes. “Donald suffered deprivations that would scar him for life.”
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The president’s niece, a clinical psychologist, claims this childhood trauma saw him grow to become not only a “narcissist” but also someone who “meets the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, which in its most severe form is generally considered sociopathy”.
“Lying, cheating and hiding one’s true feelings” were all allegedly rewarded in the Trump household, says CNBC.
Mary Trump claims that as a result, her uncle came to view these behaviours as the norm, using lying as “a mode of self-aggrandisement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was”.
She also alleges “multiple instances of shocking behaviour by the president as a younger man, including academic cheating to get into a prestigious business school, and brutal treatment of women”, reports The Guardian, which has obtained a copy of the memoir, titled “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man”.
The book is due to be released next Tuesday, following a failed legal bid by the Trump family to block the publication.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany yesterday insisted that “it’s a book of falsehoods... ridiculous, absurd allegations that have absolutely no bearing in truth”.
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